"Let us praise the men of renown," says Holy Scripture (Ecclesiasticus, 44), "and our fathers in their generations.... Such as have borne rule in their dominions, men of great power and endued with their wisdom ... ruling over the present people, and by the strength of wisdom instructing the people in most holy words."
We have to think now of a man of renown who bore rule in his dominions; a man of great power, and endued with wisdom; who by strength and wisdom instructed his people in most holy words. We have hitherto spoken of work done in the dedicated life of religion: to-day we direct our attention to the work of a great layman; the first English layman whom we know to have been a great power in literature; less as a "maker," poet or proseman, than as an opener out to "makers" of precious store; a helper and encourager; a fellow-student; a learner and a teacher of whom it could be said, as Chaucer says of his Clerk of Oxford, "gladly would he learn and gladly teach."
It would not, I think, be possible for English people to over-estimate the value of the gift God gave them in King Aelfred. That is really the right way to spell his name, but as to most people it looks unfamiliar, we will adopt the more usual spelling and write of him as Alfred.
We think of him in various aspects: first as the strong, brave man who did so much toward making noble history for time to come, by his own action, guided by his piety and devotion. His earliest work was to fight for the gaining of freedom and unity for his people, and this work went over many years. When there was an interval of peace, and when a more settled peace had been won, he worked hard to gain for them the freedom of the mind which can never exist where ignorance is reigning. Freedom is the first great possession; afterwards we seek for learning and culture. People who may be called away at any moment to fight for life or liberty cannot do much in the way of quiet study; and while the Danes were not yet finally repulsed or bound by treaty, the great work of Alfred in civilizing England had to remain in suspense.
We love to think that Alfred's wars were not to greaten himself, but to set his country free. Then, as later on, if I may quote what I have elsewhere said, the English
There is another aspect in which we may look at this great King; we think of him not only as a doer but as a sufferer; and not only as an endurer of disappointment, a bearer of toil, difficulty, trouble, but as one who bore in his body a "white martyrdom" of great pain, perhaps even anguish; and this for some twenty years.
Alfred was always a loyal son of the Church. His father, Æthelwulf, sent him to Rome when he was quite a little boy, and Pope Leo IV was godfather to him at his Confirmation, and, on hearing the report of Æthelwulf's death, consecrated him as king, as he had been asked to do. But Æthelwulf did not die for a little time after, and took Alfred for a second visit to Rome. Each of Alfred's three brothers reigned a short time before he became King of Wessex in 871. In that same year he fought no fewer than nine battles against the Danes, besides making sundry raids upon them. It is well to be a good fighting man where need is, and it is well to use the qualities that go to the making up of the good fighting man to meet the difficulties that beset the path of duty and the way of progress. Courage, strength, generosity, perseverance, these are needed for all work alike in peace and war.
Alfred was familiar in his youth with English songs, and most probably knew the old Norse sagas; but he had to learn Latin in his later life. We must remember that most of the literature which Alfred could get at was locked up in Latin; even the invaluable Church History of St Bede needed a translator's key; and it was Alfred who first applied this key to it.
When we think of the prose written in England in early days, we are thinking of the work of scholars, in a grand language that had done growing; a language that was to be in Western Christendom the language of religion, the language of the altar, for how long a time who can know? the language that gave birth to other languages, as its literature so powerfully influenced both theirs and that of others not descended from it. Not yet was the time for a great prose literature in England, such as grew up many a year ago, and is going on in our own days.
The earliest literature of a people is almost invariably in verse: the literature that comes from the heart of a people, and is not the production of a few learned folk. In early days, there was little reading or writing, except in the shelter of the great monasteries. The common folk-literature, which is a very precious thing, is preserved, in such times as we are thinking of, in people's memories, and circulated by recitation, this recitation being accompanied by music or by rhythmical movements of the body. We all know how much easier it is to remember a page of verse than a page of prose. Thus, the form that could most easily be carried in the memory and recited, would naturally be the first to flourish.
We have seen something of early English religious poetry in Caedmon's work and that of his followers; and next we shall come back to poetry with Cynewulf, who made great and holy verse.
But beside such work as these poems which were written by cultivated men, many poems and fragments of verse were floating about the land, come over from the old native country with the first Angles and Saxons who made their home in Britain. These were dear to the people and dear, as we shall see, to the greatest among their kings, Alfred, who was, we may say, the founder of English prose. It was not English prose as we know English prose, because the language was then more like German than anything else; but it was prose in the native tongue, and this was a good and great thing to begin.
In our gratitude to Alfred, we must not forget our gratitude to the English scholars of older days, none of whom had put us under so great a debt as our dear old Benedictine of Jarrow.
A later writer than St Bede, though not so great as he, was Alcuin of York, who was invited by no less a man than Charlemagne to teach his children, and who became, as it has been phrased, a sort of Minister of Public Education in his empire.
Alcuin was good as well as great, and I will give you a little instance of the rightness of his thought. In a Dialogue which he wrote, in his teaching days, he supposes Prince Pepin to ask the question, "What is the liberty of man?" and the answer is, "Innocence."
But the evil days of invasion and war and trouble had swept learning from its northern home; and Alfred's work was to bring it back to another part of England.
We cannot forget the impression that must have been made upon Alfred by his stay in Rome, young as he was at the time, he being in the centre of royal state while there, and also being himself a royal child to whom much would be told and under whose notice much would be brought; and who, from his position, would be expected to mark and remember much. Long afterwards, he would recall the magnificence he had seen, and associate it with the glories of the double history of Rome; Rome pagan and Rome Christian: Rome, the great conqueror and law-giver, spiritual as well as temporal. Very often, after Alfred was king, he sent over embassies and gifts to Rome, loving her, and reverencing her as it was meet he should. The Holy Father granted him certain privileges for the English school at Rome, and sent him a piece of the wood of the Holy Cross.
There is a pretty story told of Alfred's early learning to read English verse. Even if it is not true, it points to his love of English, as well as learning; a love which never left him. He wanted English to be taught in schools, and he loved the old poems. We owe to him the translation of the account of the first English poet, Caedmon, from which I have quoted in my first chapter. But rightly, he felt the very great importance of learning Latin, and so he learned it himself, and made others learn it too.
When Alfred came to the throne, he tells us, learning had fallen away so utterly in England that there were very few of the clergy, on the south side of the Humber, who could understand the Latin of their Mass-books, and he thinks not many beyond the Humber. This state of things was very different from that of old times when the clergy were "so keen about both teaching and learning and all the services they owed to God": very different from St Bede's time, and the days when Northumbria was a centre of learning and culture. Alfred was to create a new centre, not in the North but in Wessex. Later on, the centre of learning and cultivation was shifted to the East Midlands, whose dialect became the language of England, and whose great poet, Chaucer, was the greatest English poet before Spenser and Shakespere.
In his studies Alfred was helped by various friends, the chief of whom was a Welsh Bishop, named Asser. So greatly did Alfred value Asser that he wanted him to live altogether at Court; but Asser felt, it is to be supposed, that this would not be right, and arranged to spend half his time in Wales and half with the King. From him we learn a great deal about Alfred.
One of the Latin books translated by Alfred—perhaps the first—was called the "Pastoral Care" ("Cura Pastoralis"). It was written by St Gregory the Great, and was intended for the clergy as a guide to their duties. The king had a copy sent to every bishopric. He called it the Herdsman's Book, or Shepherd's Book. Sending all these copies made of course a great deal of work for scribes or "bookers," as we may render the old "bóceras," the copyists who had to write out all their books by hand.
As various books had been turned into the "own tongue" of various nations, so would Alfred give to his people in their "own tongue" books of help, of knowledge, of wisdom. This is how Alfred tells us he worked.
"I began to turn into English the book which in Latin is named 'Pastoralis,' and in English 'Shepherd's Book'; sometimes word for word, sometimes meaning for meaning, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my Archbishop, and Asser my Bishop, and from Grimbold, my Mass-priest, and from John, my Mass-priest."
At the end of the translation, Alfred put some little verses of his own.
Alfred as we have seen, translated St Bede's History, omitting many chapters which contained things he may be supposed to have thought were not of general interest. He also edited the English, usually called the Anglo-Saxon, Chronicle, which begins with the invasion of Julius Caesar, and ends with the accession of Henry II. There are a good many MSS. of it, the earliest of which ends with the year 855. We owe this work, as we owe so much beside, to the care of the monks who wrote it, adding to it probably, year by year, sometimes giving poetry as well as prose. It contains several poems, among them the vigorous lay of the Battle of Brunanburh, fought in 937 by Athelstane against the Scots and Danes. You will find a rendering of it among Tennyson's poems, made by him from a prose translation of his son's. This editing of the A.S. Chronicle was very important work, work that has helped generations of history-writers and students. Where should we be without these Histories? How much of it Alfred actually did himself we do not know: we may suppose he had a good deal to do with the chronicling of the events of his own reign. I wonder whether it was he that wrote how three bold Irishmen came over from Ireland in a boat without any rudder, having stolen away from their country, "because they desired for the love of God to be in a state of pilgrimage, they recked not where." They had a boat made of "two hides and a half," and provisions for a week. They got to Cornwall on the seventh day, and soon after went to Alfred. We have no account of their visit to the King, but I think he would have welcomed them right warmly, and loved to hear how big souls ride in little cockleshells. We know their names at least: Dubslane, Macbeth, and Maclinnuim. And immediately after this record we are told something that must also in a different way have greatly interested Alfred. "And Swifneh, the best teacher among the Scots (Irish) died."
Another book that Alfred translated was the History written by a Spanish priest called Orosius, a disciple of St Augustine's (of Hippo), which "was looked upon as a standard book of universal history." Alfred by no means gave a literal translation, but used great freedom, and omitted some things and put in others which he judged of greater interest and importance for Englishmen. Alfred enlarged the account of Northern Europe, which he knew a great deal of. He also added the accounts of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, the former of whom got round the north of Scandinavia and explored the White Sea. Wulfstan's voyage also was of importance. Both these men told Alfred their stories, and he incorporated them in the History. They came to see him, and Ohthere gave him teeth of the walrus, and no doubt Alfred listened to all they told him, with the keenest interest.
"The account of Ohthere's voyage holds a unique position as the first attempt to give expression to the spirit of discovery."
Alfred knew how to use helpers. All who understand the "ought to be" take help as well as give it. The good King encouraged others, and the office of encourager is no mean part of the office of helper. We cannot do our work in the world alone: God meant us to work with others, and man's best work as an individual can never be independent of the work of others, those who are living or those who have gone before.
Another of the books translated by Alfred was the "Consolations of Philosophy," by a good and thoughtful Consul of Rome, who was put to death by Theodoric, the Arian King of the East Goths. He wrote the book in prison, and there was so much in it that was felt to be in accord with Christian teaching that some people thought Boethius must have belonged to the body of Holy Church.
A Christian writer, finding a book seeming to possess much of the spirit of Christianity, would naturally study it and frequently use it; and Boethius's book, with more or less adaptation, grew to be a great favourite with Christians. Its influence can be traced in the work of the greatest Catholic poet, Dante, and in that of the great English poet, Chaucer, who rendered it into the English of his day.
Alfred made the translation definitely Christian. For instance, he writes of "God" and "Christ" where Boethius says "love" or "the good"; and he writes of "angels" instead of "divine substance."
I will give you one or two specimens of the additions to Boethius with which Alfred is credited.
"He that will have eternal riches, let him build the house of his mind on the footstone of lowliness; not on the highest hill where the raging wind of trouble blows, or the rain of measureless anxiety."
"Power is never a good unless he be good who has it."
Here is what he has to say of being well-born:
"Art thou more fair for other men's fairness? A man will not be the better because he had a well-born father, if he himself is nought. The only thing which is good in noble descent is this, that it makes men ashamed of being worse than their elders, and strive to do better than they."
And here is his standard of self-respect:
"We under-worth ourselves when we love that which is lower than ourselves."[D]
These sayings are worth copying into a little book such as Alfred kept to note down things he wanted to keep track of. Asser tells us this, and he tells us of the "Handbook" which grew to a great size, from this collecting habit of Alfred's. The book was unfortunately lost.
By no means have we exhausted the interest of Alfred's story. It would be indeed difficult to do so; but we must now bid him good-bye.
We love to think how, amidst all his cares and work for his kingdom, he had the true Catholic Missionary spirit; for he sent embassies to India, with alms for "the Christians of St Thomas and St Bartholomew."
There is a valuable thing which we possess, known as the "Alfred Jewel": it has on it an inscription which we can truly say applies to far more than this work of art. Its application to Alfred's work is indeed a very wide one:
We are going now to consider some of the greatest poetry written before the Conquest. It associates itself with the name of Cynewulf, a name with which certain poems are signed in runes. By-and-by we shall hear something about runes and the old writing; and something also about where our old treasures of literature, part of our dear Catholic heritage, are found in their original form.
As I have said, certain poems are signed with Cynewulf's name; and there are others which are with more or less probability of rightness attributed to him on grounds of likeness of subject, likeness of style, similar greatness of treatment.
About Cynewulf himself we know, I may say, nothing except what we gather from his work. Various guesses have been made, and various theories formed, identifying him with one or other of the men about whom we know something; but for the present, at all events, we must be content to think that he probably lived in the eighth century, and that he probably was a North-countryman. All his writings have come to us in the dialect of Wessex, except some parts of a poem known as the "Dream of the Holy Rood." These are carved on an old cross, which I will speak of by-and-by, and they are in the Northumbrian dialect; but the manuscript of the entire poem is in West Saxon.
Scholars are working upon old materials and discoveries are being made and theories formed which are at variance with what used to be set down as certainty. The main thing is that we have these poems, and that we want to know about them and learn to prize them. If we want to know them thoroughly and prize them as they deserve, we must take the trouble to learn the language they are written in. But many of us have not time for this, and so must be content, for the present, at least, with making their acquaintance through translations.
Perhaps Cynewulf was a poet who lived as one of the household of some great lord, and wrote more at his ease than if he had been merely an itinerant singer, a "gleeman," who sang his songs as he went about. He appears, at any rate, to have been an educated man, and I think no one can read his poetry without feeling that he was a man of deep and fervent piety.
There are four poems signed by Cynewulf, and these are named "Christ," "Juliana," "The Fates of the Apostles," and "Elene." Certain "Riddles" have also been attributed to him.
The poems I am going to bring before you now are the "Elene" and a poem on the Holy Cross, which has been attributed to Cynewulf, and which I for one—and I am not by any means alone in this—love to believe that he must have written. The "Phœnix," about which we thought in a former chapter, has by some been supposed to be his. Then there is the "Judith," of which we possess enough to make us recognise it as indeed one of our great possessions; but to-day the two poems I have named will give us enough to think of. To adapt a lovely Scriptural phrase (Judith vii, 7), there are springs whereof we refresh ourselves a little rather than drink our fill. Let us drink, if not our fill, at least a draught long and deep.
We have a church festival, instituted many hundred years ago, the Festival of the Finding of the Cross. Let us hear something of what our old poet sings concerning this in the poem named after the heroine of the finding, St Helena; the poem known as "Elene."
Cynewulf is one of the poets of the Cross. His poetry is literally stamped with the mark of the Holy Rood. Read over the grand Church hymns, the "Vexilla Regis," the "Pange lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis," or recall them in your memory—their Passiontide echoes sound under the triumphant pealing of the bells of Easter—and then be glad that one of your own poets has also sent down the ages the song of his love and his reverence.
Cynewulf knew well the story of Constantine's vision of the Cross of Victory whereby he was to conquer. He would also have had in mind the story, not so far remote from his own day, of the English King, St Oswald, who reared a cross to God's honour before he fought with Cadwalla, the pagan Welsh king. He would remember how the Saint had called upon his comrades at Heavenfield to fall down with him before the Cross and pray Almighty God for salvation from the mighty foe. He would recall the great victory and the cross-shaped church built to commemorate it. He knew well the honour of the Cross. He had often knelt to adore what it symbolised, when he saw it raised on high, lifted up on the Church's Festival. And he loved the Cross with a great and fervid love.
The poem of his making tells us how the great army of the Huns and Goths[E] came against Constantine; how the warriors marched on, having raised the standard of war with shoutings and the clashing of shields. Bright shone their darts and their coats of linked mail. The wolf in the wood howled out the song of war; he kept not the secret of the slaughter. The dewy-feathered eagle raised a song on the track of the foe.
The King of the Romans was sorrow-smitten when he saw the countless host of the foreign men upon the river-bank. In his sleep that night came the vision of one in the likeness of a man, white and bright of hue. The messenger named him by his name. The helmet of night glided apart. The behest was given to look up to Heaven to find help, a token of victory. The Emperor's heart was opened and he looked up as the angel, the lovely weaver of peace, had bidden him. Above the roof of clouds he saw the Tree of Glory with its words of promise. The great battle came, when the Holy Sign was borne forth. Loud sang the trumpets. The raven was glad thereof, and the dewy-feathered eagle looked on at the march, and the wolf lifted up his howling. The terror of war was there, the clash of shields and the mingling of men, and the heavy sword-swing and the felling of warriors.
When the standard was raised, the Holy Tree, the foe was scattered far and wide. From break of day till eventide the flying foe was pursued; his number was indeed made small. It was but a few of the best of the Huns that went home again.
How the old fighting spirit delights in the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war"! How it loves to have the clash of spear and shield strike upon the ear, and to hear how the voice of the eagle and the raven, and the howl of the wolf, proclaim the place of slaughter, the reek of battle!
Cynewulf calls the angel who stood by Constantine in his vision a "weaver of peace"; but the peace was to be woven after conflict, and the wearer of the victor's palm had first to wield the fighter's sword.
When Constantine had learned about the Cross from the few Christians he could find, he believed and was baptized, says the poet. (In reality his baptism took place just before his death, several years later.)
The thought of the Tree was ever with Constantine, and when he had returned he sent his mother with a multitude of warriors to Jerusalem, on the quest of the Holy Rood that was hidden underground. Helena was soon ready for her willing journey, and set forth with her escort.
What delight there is to the poet in the sea and its ships!
When they come to Jerusalem, after much enquiry of the wisest men, and great difficulty, the Queen is conducted to the Mount of Crucifixion, by one Judas who knows the story of Redemption, and who the Queen insists shall point out the resting place of the Holy Rood. It is found by the winsome smoke that rises at the prayer of Judas, who forthwith makes full confession of his belief in Him who hung upon that Cross. The three crosses are together, buried far down in the earth, and Judas digs deep and brings them up, and they are laid before the knees of the Queen. Glad of heart she asks on which of them the Son of the Ruling One had suffered. The Lord's Cross is revealed by its power to raise a dead man who is brought to the place.
Satan assaults Judas, angry and bitter, for again his power has been brought low. One Judas has made him joyful: the second Judas has humbled him. He is boldly answered when he pours out threats and foretells that another king than Constantine will arise to persecute. (Probably the allusion is to Julian the Apostate.) But Judas answers boldly, and Helena rejoices at the wisdom with which in so short a time he has been gifted.
Far and near the glorious news is spread, and word is sent the Emperor how the Victorious Token has been found. Then comes the building of a church by his mother, at his desire; and the adorning of the Rood with gold and jewels fair and splendid, and its enclosure in a silver chest. Judas is baptized, and becomes Bishop of Jerusalem under the new name of Cyriacus.
The holy nails of the Passion have yet to be found, and again the earth yields up her treasure. A man great in wisdom tells Elene to bid the noblest of the kings of the earth to put them on his bridle, make thereof his horse's bit. This shall bring him good speed in war, and blessing and honour and greatness.
Now let us read what our poet says about the Festival of the Finding of the Cross.[F]
The poet wrote about the Holy Cross, not just because it was a picturesque subject, capable of picturesque treatment, one that would make a fine poem; but because, as he tells us, Holy Wisdom had revealed to him "wider knowledge through her glorious power over the thoughts of the mind." He tells us how the fetters of sin had bound him in their bitter bondage, and how, stained and sorrowful, light came to him, and the Mighty King bestowed on him His bountiful grace, and gave him light and liberty, opening his heart and setting free for him the gift of song, that gift which, he says, he has used in the world joyfully and with a good will.
Not once alone, he says, did he meditate upon the Tree of Glory, but over and over again. He thought upon it until all his soul was saturated with it, and hallowed and consecrated for ever.
He may have venerated the Cross in public on the anniversary of the Lord's Crucifixion. Certainly, many a time he had venerated it in private. Perhaps, like Alcuin, his habit was to bow toward the Cross whenever he saw it, and whisper the prayer "Tuam crucem adoramus, Domine, et Tuam gloriosam recolimus passionem."[G]
He was old, he tells us, when he "wove word-craft, made his poem, framing it wondrously, pondering and sifting his thoughts in the night-time."
The Cross had brought him light and healing, and at the foot of the Cross he laid his gift of song.
It is a moot point whether the "Elene" or the "Dream of the Holy Rood" came first. The poetry of the "Dream" is as fine as the conception is grand, and, at whatever time it was written, it must be classed as being at the high-water mark of the poet's work.
Wonderful things have been given to us "under the similitude of a dream"; things beautiful and terrible, things wise and strange. There have been Dreamers of Dreams into whose souls have sunk the sight and the hearing of deep things, high things and precious, of comfort and of warning, of sweetest help and of gravest and most earnest exhortation.
The speech of these Dreamers has sounded in our ears, and has left the vibrations to go on and on for our lifetime: this we call remembering.
In English literature we have some great tellings "under the similitude of a dream." We have the nineteenth-century "Dream of Gerontius," our great Cardinal's drama of the soul in its parting and after. We have the seventeenth-century dream from the darkness of Bedford Gaol, whence John Bunyan saw the pilgrims on their way, through dangers and trials, on to the river that must be crossed before they could come to the Celestial City. We have the fourteenth-century dream of the gaunt, sad-souled William Langley, the dreamer of the Malvern Hills. And, earlier by many a century, we have the dream of the dreamer at the depth of midnight, the midnight whose heart was bright with the splendour of the glorious vesting and gem-adorning of the Cross of Jesus Christ, and dark with the moisture of the Sacred Blood that oozed therefrom.
We have first the simple, quiet prelude.
Then comes the description of the Cross in its glory. It is uplift and girt with light, flooded with gold and set with precious gems. This is followed by the seeing through the glory, the seeing of the anguish. The hues are shifted from dark to bright; the light of gold lights it, and yet anon it is wet, defiled with Blood. Here are the two sides of the Passion: the veiled glory, and the illumined anguish: the supreme might, and the absolute weakness: the darkness of the grave, and the light of the Resurrection.
While time shall be, the Cross is to us all the Book where we may read all we choose to read, all God sends us grace to read. Cynewulf chose to read, and with Cynewulf was the grace of God.
The poet lies beholding the wondrous sight: the sight that all God's fair angels beheld, and all the universe, and men of mortal breath.
The Rood speaks to Cynewulf. To us, with every look upon the Cross, should come, would come, were we alive all through with keen, sweet, spiritual life, the voice telling of the Passion, of the victory, of the glory. Cynewulf heard the Rood tell how long ago it was hewn down, ordained to lift up the evil-doers, to bear the law-breakers.
We notice the obedience of the Cross. In its absolute sympathy with its Creator's agony, its indignation at the horrible crime of His enemies, it would fain have fallen and crushed the gazing foes abhorred. But this was not to be, any more than fire was to come down from heaven at the Boanerges' call when they were fain to avenge the insult put upon their Master, whom the people of the Samaritan city would not receive (Luke ix, 52, etc.).
The Great King is lifted up, and the Rood dare not even stoop: the dark nails pierce the Cross, and it stands, companion of its Maker's agony and shame.
How great is the poet's insight! How deeply must he have entered into the fellowship of that supreme suffering! He knows that throughout creation that cup is being drunk from, as even yet it is in the groaning and travailing of every creature, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, to wit, the redemption of the body (Romans viii, 22, 3).
The Descent from the Cross and the Burial come next. Tenderly, after the telling of the anguish, comes the telling of the rest.
The bitter weeping goes up. The fair Body waxes chill. Then, in a very few words the story told in "Elene" is condensed.
The glory comes after the shame, and we hear of the healing power of the Cross, and the honour given to it. Even as Almighty God honoured His Mother above all womankind, the poet says, so this tree is set high above all trees of the forest.
The command is laid upon the poet to make known his vision. There is a compulsion whereby a poet as it were has to send abroad the fair thought and knowledge wherewith he has been graced. To this poet is the task assigned to tell of the Crucifixion, of the Resurrection, and the Ascension, and of the Second Coming to judge the world.
By the love of His name, by the love that means martyrdom in will if not in deed also, shall men be judged.
The comfort of his life has come to the poet. The greatest of all great things is his.
I cannot close this chapter without saying something about the great stone rood known as the Ruthwell Cross, because it bears upon it part of this poem engraved in runes. The cross is at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire. It is very old, probably dating from the tenth or eleventh century. There are carvings upon it of various events in the life of Our Lord, on the north and south sides. On the top-stone, north, is a representation of St John with the eagle, and on the top-stone, south, is St John with the Agnus Dei. On the east and west is carved a vine in fruit, with animals feeding, and at each side of the vine-tracery the runes are carved, which give the words taken from the poem, in the Northumbrian dialect.
This cross used to stand in the church at Ruthwell; it escaped injury at the time of general destruction in the sixteenth century, but the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ordered the "many idolatrous monuments erected and made for religious worship" to be "taken down, demolished, and destroyed." It was not till two years later, however, that the cross was taken down when an Act was passed "anent the Idolatrous Monuments in Ruthwell." It was shattered, and some of the carved emblems were nearly obliterated, and in this state the rood was left where it had fallen, in the altarless church, and was used, it appears, as a bench to sit upon. Later on it was removed from the church and left out in the churchyard. But after many years, a good old minister (God rest his soul!) collected all the pieces he could find, and put them together, adding two new crossbeams (the original ones were lost), and having gaps filled in with little pieces of stone.
By-and-by there was a waking up to the importance of preserving ancient monuments (idolatrous! or not), and so the dear, beautiful old rood that had been so near to destruction, and been indeed so greatly injured, was brought into the church again, and set up near its old place. But, alas! for its old surroundings!
It is a sad story, is it not?
Shall we not pray that, one day, our old crosses may be, to all, more than "ancient monuments"?
"This stone which I have set up ... shall be called the house of God" (Gen. xxviii, 22).
To-day we shall think about some more of the great poetry that was made before the Norman Conquest, and we shall first take one of the finest and most characteristic poems which remain to us, a poem founded on Bible story; the great poem, of which we have unfortunately only a part, the "Judith."
It is not certain who wrote this poem: it may have been Cynewulf; but we do not know.
The story of Judith is a well-known one; the story of the Hebrew lady who is described in the foreword to the Book of Judith as "that illustrous woman, by whose virtue and fortitude, and armed with prayer, the children of Israel were preserved from the destruction threatened them by Holofernes and his great army."
The earlier part of the poem is lost, so we can only guess how the poet told of the ravage wrought by the general of King Nabuchodonoser in the countries close to Palestine, and how submission was as vain as resistance to a power which, for the time being, was allowed to be so terribly great.
The poem, as we have it, begins where Judith has come, in the splendour of her beauty, and the might of her purity, and the power of her faith, to destroy the destroyer and set her people free.
We have the description of the banquet, with the deep bowls and well-filled cups and pitchers borne to the sitters along the floor—just the description of the old Saxon banquet which the poet knew of. We have the drunken glee of Holofernes, his right noisy laughter and the stormy mirth that could be heard from afar; and his call to the henchmen to quit them as warriors ought, till at last they lie in their drunken sleep, powerless, and as though stricken of death.
Then comes the night, and the sending for Judith, the wise-hearted one, to Holofernes' tent. Holofernes lies in his drunken sleep, and the Lord's handmaid draws from the sheath the keen-edged glittering sword, and prays,
And then,
And she smites the evil general with the strength she had prayed for, and goes forth victorious with her handmaiden, to bear the tidings to her people of the deliverance wrought for them, ascribing the glory to God and His might. Judith leaves the camp of the Assyrians, with her waiting-woman, who carries the head of Holofernes in a bag. Men and women in great multitudes flock to the fortress-gate, pressing and running to meet God's handmaid, glad of heart to know of her home-coming. They let her in reverently, and the trophy she has brought is shown them. Judith beseeches them to go forth to the fight, as soon as the Maker of the beginning of all things, the King of high honour, hath sent the bright light from the East; to go forth bearing shield and buckler and the bright helmet, to meet the thronging foemen, and fell the folk-leaders, the doomed spear-bearers. Their foes are doomed to death, and they shall have glory and honour in battle. Then follows a great battle, with full victory to Israel.
The poet has varied from the Biblical story, in representing the officers of Holofernes' army as drunk; and also in telling of a battle after the return of Judith to Bethulia. It also may seem strange that Judith should address the Holy Trinity and each separate Person thereof. The old Christian poet carried his belief along with him, and the handmaid of God, the brave Judith, was to him a follower of Our Lord. The brave Judith, yes! St Dominic's Third Order was at first, as we know, called "The militia of Jesus Christ." How Judith would have loved the name! And we may think, may we not? how, looking from her place among the glorified, she smiled on the great warrior Maiden Saint who went in the might of the Lord, to deliver her country from the rule of the stranger.
The story of Judith would especially appeal to people living at a time when incursions of foreigners were well known, and later on, still unforgotten. Abbot Ælfric, about whose work I have to tell you something presently, in writing a short account of the Old Testament with its various books, says that the Book of Judith "is put into English in our manner as an example to you men, that you should defend your country with weapons against an invading army"—the word which he uses, "here," always meaning in old English the army of the Danes. Ælfric also wrote "a homily on Judith to teach the English the virtues of resistance to the Danes."
It is interesting likewise to think that the poet of "Judith" may have had in his mind some great Englishwoman concerning whom he wished in a veiled way to convey well-deserved praise. Perhaps he was inspired to tell of Judith, by the deeds of King Alfred's daughter, Æthelflaed, known as the Lady of the Mercians, and sought to do honour to her as well as to the great Hebrew lady.
Æthelflaed fortified Chester and other towns, and, along with King Edward, built fortresses, "chiefly along the line of frontier exposed to the Danes, as at Bridgenorth, Tamworth, Warwick, Hertford, Witham in Essex, and other places." Of course it is uncertain whether our poet was thinking of Æthelflaed. We should be able to say whether it were impossible if we knew the date of "Judith," as, if the poem were composed before Æthelflaed's time, she could not have entered into the poet's mind.
The Church has paid a splendid tribute to Judith by applying to her who is pre-eminently the strong or valiant woman (mulier fortis) full of the strength that always wore the exquisite veil of humility, the words spoken to this valiant woman of the Hebrews by her countrymen, as they adored the Lord, who had given her the victory. See the lesson read on the Feast of Our Lady's Seven Sorrows.